If only I could be a T&CO

If I could be a bee, I would be miss taco!

http://www.weddingbee.com/2009/10/28/brainstorming-a-new-generation-of-bees-patterns-and-crafts/

I've been checking my email every day, anxiously awaiting that one special email. So many things need to line up for my dream to come true! I'm guessing whoever is assigned to my blog (Mrs. Penguin?) has to like me, like my writing. And then the committee needs to like me. And if in the smallest chances I get accepted, I'm hoping the taco icon is still available!

Why taco? The first weekend that kyzen8 visited me after we became official, we were chilling on my green futon. He noticed I was wearing a necklace with a solid heart and reached out to look at it. When he flipped it around, he was like "Taco?" I was all confused what he meant, until I noticed it spelled T&CO (Tiffany & Co)! I would have taken a picture of the back of the necklace, but I have since lost it at a massage parlor in Shanghai which was so so sad (we even got the police involved because it had such high sentimental value for me). Here's the front of the necklace:

Tiffany Etoile heart pendant

Also, one of my favorite foods in the world is the Taco Bell chalupa! I saw this cute taco pouch at a crafts store the other day:

Oh please let me bee! What would you want to bee?

Eiffel-inspired invitation cover

I feel like a little girl in Disneyland. It's so exciting to be buying and expecting packages for my DIY invitation project. So far, I have a rotary trimmer, cutting/perforating/scoring blades, a stack of trial paper, and an unopened printer that just arrived today.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the #105 metallic cardstock was too thick as a standalone for my complicated pocketfold; the edges were peeling along the folds. Fortunately, I found that the #29 white translucent vellum paper works well as a pocketfold overlayed on metallic lavender card stock (any peeling would be hidden behind vellum). Oh how I love paperandmore.com paper and even moreso their customer service (prompt, helpful emails)!

My brain started churning. At first I wanted to print a picture of a purple daisy with yellow center (like the invitation I was previously inspired by).

But it seemed a bit lonesome on its own, yet a bit random to incorporate with text. The latest thought is to buy a big eiffel tower rubber stamp and overlay (or underlay) it with a poem. Here's a rough draft that I just came up with telling our proposal story:

It all started with a promise
In the eiffel park of paris
On bicycles, the two of us
A homeless man, a pair of ducks
Tower lit up for all to see
And kyzen got down on one knee
Took out a heart ring, words galore
"Love more, learn more, and travel more"
That's what it means, the hole in heart
Strengthens our bond, never apart
Please join us, the tenth of july
Witness our vows under the sky

Now imagine it overlayed on top of this:

Though more realistically, it will be a stamp like this (because the #105 cardstock is advertised as not compatible with home printers):

Do you have suggestions for what color ink, what color stamp, and what to print on the white (slightly gray) vellum top, vellum back, or metallic lavender card stock top?

Color palette

Growing up, I've always loved bright, screaming pinks like magenta and fuschia. Pink is such a versatile wedding color because flowers come in many different shades of it. But after wearing my 2nd pink bridesmaid dress in a wedding, I was thinking maybe I would do something different for my own wedding. And after my 4th pink bridesmaid dress, I decided no pink for sure! Although, pink would be a convenient color if I wanted to have my 4 bridesmaids each wear one of my existing dresses.

So what color was next? Purple. Specifically, lavender. It's always been up there as one of my favorite colors next to magenta and fuschia. I've always loved the look of lavender fields. Aren't these pretty?

Green looks pretty nice with the lavender. But I've never really liked green clothes nor flowers. So green was out. I do love silver though. So I knew for sure silver and lavender would be part of my wedding colors. I also added white to balance out some of the purples.

Still, in the back of my mind was my friend's warning that lavender and silver would look too prom-ish. Was lavender overwhelming my wedding? Especially with lavender linens and lighting and flowers, I did at one point feel like the room would be over-saturated with purples. So then I decided to have alternating purple and blue uplights to vary the mood. Brown was also a color I couldn't avoid because the barebone reception room is basically a brown palette with brown furniture, brown staircase, brown chiavari chairs, and dark patterned carpet. I was intially worried that brown wouldn't go well with purple, but now I'm thinking they might look okay. As for linens, the guest tables will all have silver table linens with lavender napkins. Only the sweetheart table will have lavender table linens with silver napkins. That way there would be more silver than lavender, and the lights would also reflect better. And my latest thought is to add some blue to all the flowers. Actually, part of me is thinking yellow flowers for the bridesmaid bouquets. But I have my doubts about the yellow so for now flowers will be a mix of white, lavender, and blue.

Here's my latest wedding color palette:

Does brown clash with all the other colors? What colors should my bridesmaids' bouquets be if their dresses are lavender?

Hush *mush* dilemma

(Title change -- I gave kyzen8 strict instructions not to read my blog though I send him links to individual posts sometimes. Don't want "Mushroom" to show up in the list of titles on the bottom!)

My kyzen8 is really cute sometimes. How many other guys out there would request 1-up mushroom cupcakes for a wedding cake? I had my heart set on another wedding cake (to be discussed later), but decided to surprise him with a 1up grooms cake! Prior to getting engaged, I had never even heard of a grooms cake. I actually think it's a silly idea to have a whole separate cake that takes attention away from the main wedding cake. But kyzen8 deserves to have something he can call his own!

So I discussed our options with Misty at Briarmist Cakes. She can do a 1-up mushroom cake that roughly has the following dimensions:
Base diameter: 7-8"
Mushroom cap diameter: 11-12"
Height: 9-10"

The grooms cake will sit atop a baby grand piano that is next to our sweetheart table (the wedding cake will be on a separate table flanking the other side). The dilemma is I think a singular 1up mushroom will look dinky on the ~5 foot wide piano top. So then I thought maybe I can pair it up with a red super mushroom for a boy-and-girl look, or have a bunch of mini super mushrooms surrounding it. They're both so cute that I'm having a hard time deciding!

Super mushroom (girl) and 1-up mushroom (boy):

http://www.chuchurocketeer.net/?tag=mushroom

1-up mushroom flanked by mini super mushrooms:

http://www.boardgamenews.com/dyu/Bday1.jpg

Which do you like better?

Dress B

Contrary to what you might think, this post is not about my dress (which will be secret for now!). I'm happy to announce that I will be buying Dress B (the one in which I had my "this is it!" moment) for all my girls. Dress B was by far the favorite for 2 of the bridesmaids and would have also been the favorite for the 3rd bridesmaid had it not been for the "troublesome" corset back. I think "trouble" is a small price to pay for beauty though! It turns out that Sophi Tolli used to work for Maggie Sottero (the maker of my dress), which makes sense now because they both specialize in corset backs. Too bad my 4th bridesmaid lives all the way in Hong Kong and won't be able to try it on. I even checked the Sophia Tolli site to see if they have stores there but no luck. But we already have plenty of data points to go by and I'm sure she'll look fabulous in it as well.

Here is the official website and picture of this dress:

http://www.sophiatolli.com/CollectionProductDetail.aspx?cname=special_occasions&did=0&pid=504908&year=2009&season=Fall&

Sophia Tolli BY2991T

My MOH (ironically also the tallest) pointed out that we should definitely shorten the lengths because otherwise it makes you look shorter. I'm thinking middle of knee cap (like official picture above) might be the best look. Still plenty of time to decide though.

For color, I am picking lavender. Here's another dress by Sophia Tolli just to see the lavender color:

I think we're going to just keep the neckline as is with the small scoop. Others have successfully convinced me that having a slight contrast from my dress (which has a sweetheart neckline) is not a bad idea.

Mockup invitations

Over a hearty meal of butter chicken, lamb saag, garlic naan, and basmati rice, my ex-roommate (who happens to be one of my best friends) commented "There you go again!" She was referring to wedding invites, which I previously was very "whatever" about, and which was now my latest obsession. I had decided early on to eliminate married women from my wedding party, otherwise she would be right up there with me on my wedding day. Though a bit sad, I think it's a good thing I made that decision because since then, 2 of the candidates (including her) have gotten pregnant, and 1 may very well get pregnant between now and the wedding.

So last weekend, I had a wedding invitation appointment in LA at JC Printing. I was expecting to be blown away by creativity and uniqueness. Instead, as I flipped through 3 8-inch thick sample albums of invitations, it seemed like I was mostly just seeing the same invitations over and over again, each a different variation of paper, color, text. And gosh, how the prices add up. Every single set of inserts, envelopes, etc, was yet another add-on with its own price point. Since my venue has a strict capacity limit and I am planning on sending invites in waves, having different printed RSVP dates would also cost me more (for example, 2 batches of 75 is more expensive than 1 batch of 150). A little bit disappointed, I left the store, promising to return with my parents on a future date (but knowing I probably wouldn't).

Later that afternoon, I happened upon Paper Source in Pasadena. That store is a gem for someone in my shoes. They too had albums of wedding invites, but I still felt like the invitations weren't unique or me enough. The store had rows and columns of all sorts of different papers and materials; so much eye candy everywhere! And so was born the thought of DIY (which said friend above did for her own weddings and who is a great source of inspiration for me).

For some reason, I was fixated with the idea of a booklet of tearout paper, much like a boarding pass, checkbook, or coupon book. I thought it would be fun. Upon researching it online, I was disappointed to find out that the boarding pass had already been done before (http://www.ayleebits.com/2006/06/10/diy-boarding-pass-save-the-date/). On the positive side, it meant I could use other people's existing templates instead of starting completely from scratch.


I also decided I liked vellum. To be fair, at JC Printing I did find a really cute and unique vellum invitation (but it's probably a little too small for my parents' tastes):

I'm not sure yet if and how I will incorporate vellum into my DIY invitations, but I love that see-through envelope with a picture of a flower!

The 3rd thing I really wanted to include was our original idea for save-the-dates, which we ended up not doing because we didn't want to commit to inviting everyone early on (due to capacity issue), and didn't want to only send to select people. The idea was a magnet of our favorite recipe! Instead of just taking up fridge space, we wanted the save-the-date to be useful for guests (if they want to try our recipe).

This mockup invitation includes the boarding pass and magnet save-the-dates, but due to the particular size of A9 envelopes I'm thinking of using, not sure if I'll be able to find the right colored vellum envelope. I'm thinking of using vellum for the map though, which would probably be placed right behind the magnet. In the images below, imagine the white pocketfold cover in silver, and the RSVP envelope in lavender. I would consider purchasing pocketfolds instead of creating my own especially since they're cheap to begin with, but I really want that extra slit pocket for the boarding pass which ready-made ones don't have. I'm thinking of using the small tearout portion of the boarding pass as RSVPs. There would be 1 boarding pass per invited guest (hence a couple would receive 2 boarding passes, tailored with their names).

Here is my mockup (credit for boarding pass goes to Aylee Bits):

Yes, boarding pass and recipe magnet do seem kind of random for a wedding invitation. I want to write something on there to tie them together. Note sure what I'll write yet, but a boarding pass really does represent the relationship of kyzen8 and silverbuggy, who have been together for 6.5+ years, all long distance of flying back and forth 2-3 weekends a month. Doesn't hurt that we both love to travel as well. And recipe? Well that one is easy. We love to eat!

Eat-at-home boy

After an 8am start to a long 12 hour day (6 hours driving) visiting 1 linen company, 2 dress stores, and 2 wedding cake bakeries, my MOH and I were both completely exhausted. But she decided to come in to my fiance's apartment while I showed her pictures of cake toppers and dresses online. My fiance called at 8pm after his equally exhausting 13 hour work shift and asked what we should do about dinner. Feeling slightly distracted and secretive because I was showing MOH THE dress, I hurriedly said "I don't know, just come home first." Knowing me well, fiance smelled something fishy and said "What are you hiding? Awww, you cooked dinner didn't you? You cooked for me!" with this really giddy, hopeful voice, to which I felt bad and got incredibly defensive, scolding him for not realizing that we had an extremely long day and just got home ourselves!

The next day, fiance was working another 13 hour shift. I had a couple wedding appointments, including one in which I bought THE dress! I also visited a couple wedding invitation stores and did some clothes shopping. Feeling pretty tired at 5pm, yet knowing how disappointed my fiance was the previous day, I decided to go shopping for groceries. Around 8pm, the food was almost ready when fiance called and asked what to do about dinner. He suggested going for dumplings to which I said okay. I purposely made myself sound more tired and annoyed than I actually was, and he kept asking why I sounded so tired, and my repeated response was "just come home!" (and leave me alone so I can finish cooking!). When he was close to home, he called me and exclaimed "Come on out!". Panicked, I told him I needed him to come in because I clogged the toilet (his toilet clogs pretty frequently). And when he came in--SURPRISE!

I had prepared marinated cucumber, a spare ribs + special potato + squid balls + fish tofu soup, chicken oil rice, and drunken chicken. It was my first time making my aunt's yummy recipe for drunken chicken and I thought it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, my fiance hates anything with alcohol in it and didn't enjoy it as much at all. He wanted me to make sober chicken instead of drunken chicken in the future! He was telling me that growing up, he rejected any of his mom's dishes that contained alcohol. We joked about how our future kids would probably also hate this dish, and he broke out in a wicked laugh! Sigh. Here's the dish that I *love* and would like to perfect, but sadly I won't get to cook it too often unless I want to eat it all by myself:

The take home of this story is that my fiance loves to eat home cooked meals. And while I admit I go through lazy phases when I just want to eat out all the time, I did and do get a nice gush of lovey-dovey feelings whenever I see his reaction to my cooking. He loves when I exhibit the more domesticated side of myself. And I like that he likes me to be domestic, because that says a lot about what kind of husband and father he will be in the future too! It's moments like these that I really love my kyzen8.